Knowledge Management

Web Name: Knowledge Management

WebSite: http://km.typepad.com

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Knowledge,Management,knowledgemanagement,alexandreperrin,knowledgemanagers,resea

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keywords:knowledge management, alexandre perrin, knowledge managers, research
description:This weblog is managed by Alexandre Perrin, a researcher in the field of knowledge management practices in corporations.
Knowledge Management This weblog is managed by Alexandre Perrin, a researcher in the field of knowledge management practices in corporations. My Top 5 Articles in Knowledge Management from the Harvard Business Review

1. Ibarra, H. Hansen, M. Are You a Collaborative Leader? Harvard Business Review, Jul/Aug2011, Vol. 89 Issue 7/8, pages 68-74.

- My comment: an interesting self-assessment that any top manager should make! Being a collaborative leaders means: 1) connect to different social worlds and different stakeholders; 2) link people, ideas and resources and 3) connect both within the company, between collaborators and industries. Effective collaborative leaders assume a strong role directing teams and assign clear decision rights and responsibilities.

- Critics:Danger of too much focus on connections and collaboration and too little on execution.

2. Adler, P. Hecksher, C., Prusak, L. Building a Collaborative Enterprise. Harvard Business Review, Jul/Aug2011, Vol. 89 Issue 7/8, pages 94-101.

- My comment: an article that underlines four key principles to make your company more collaborative:1) defining and building a shared purpose; 2) cultivating an ethic of contribution;3) developing processes that enable people to work together in flexible but disciplined projects;4) creating an infrastructure in which collaboration is valued and rewarded.

- Critics: in collaborative organizations, players share the costs, risks, and technical challenges of innovating so, who is accountable? Personnally, I prefer my Learning Mix framework, Culture/Structure/Infrastructure/Portfolio.

3. McDermott R. Archibald D. Harnessing your staff’s informal networks. Harvard Business Review, March 2010, pages 82-89.

- My comment: the concept of community of practice remains popular in the academic litterature but how companies have to make sure that communities contribute meaningfully to the organization and operate efficiently? This article shows the results of a quantitative study of 52 communities in 10 industries, and a qualitative assessment of more than 140 communities in a dozen organizations, consisting of interviews with support staff, leaders, community members, and senior management.

- Critics: authors should focus on a managerial question I try to tackle in my research how do you identify and push community leaders?. Creating a community should really start by defining who is in charge of it...

4. Hemp, P. Death by information overload. Harvard Business Review, Sep. 2009, pages 82-89.

- My comment: my favourite article! Information clearly exceeds what a human mind could absorb in a lifetime. Implications are clear: the work becomes FRAGMENTED (it takes on average 24 min to return to the suspended task) and DECISIONS are taken in a shorter period of time. The survey mentionned in the article is very interesting (Source: AOL, 2007):

15% of Americans say they areaddicted to email.59% of those using portable devices check email as it arrives.43% of users sleep near their email unit to hear incoming messages.40% consider email accessibility when they plan a trip.83% check their email once a day while on vacation.43% check their email first thing every morning.

- Critics: a very useful article that offers practical and individual tips to enhance our cognitive ability but how a company can promote behavioral change towards e-mails and other communication chanel from complexity to simplicity?

5. Hansen, M. Nohria N. and Tierney T. What’s your strategy for managing knowledge. Harvard Business Review, March-April 1999, pages 106-116.

- My comment: a fundamental/classic article that clearly explains both strategies for KM. Codification strategy: reuse of knowledge and Personalization strategy: knowledge close tied to the person who developed it. Companies usually focus on one (80%) and use the other (20%) in a supporting role. The article also shows how to structure the development of KM programs by focusing on 3 strategic questions:

Does the company offer standardized or customized products/services?Does the company offer a mature or innovative products/services?Does the company relies on tacit or explicit knowledge to solve issues?

Critics: pretty old article (I mean in the Academic Timeline). When would be the update???

Les pratiques des knowledge managers (Thèse de Doctorat, 2008)

Ma thèse de doctorat en ligne sur Scribd (PdF intégral): http://www.scribd.com/doc/26936291/These-de-doctorat-Les-pratiques-des-gestionnaires-des-connaissances-en-entreprise-etudes-de-cas-chez-Lafarge

Atelier du 26 09, agenda franco-allemand sur les actifs immatériels, MINEFI


Téléchargement Table ronde franco-allemande sur les actifs immatériels 260911.pdf

Téléchargement Table ronde franco-allemande sur les actifs immatériels 260911.pdf

2010 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award

My PhD dissertation has received the 2010 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, publisher of the largest collection of international business and management journals, and the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD), a global membership organization with more than 700 institutional members from academia, business and public services, seek to celebrate excellence in research by sponsoring the 2010 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Awards.

Of course, I am very proud of having won this prize in the Knowledge Management category but I see that prize has a clear recognition of researchers looking at knowledge management practitioners (ie knowledge managers). As mentionned in my previous post (see below), knowledge managers are still not a matter of research work ! Hope this prize will change a little bit this trend...

1991-2010 Scientific Publications/Articles on Knowledge Management (source EBSCO/Business Source Premier)

Publications in Knowledge Management on EBSCO.
We can clearly notice and down trend since 2009. I still see very few publications about the knowledge managers (I found three in 2010).

2008 SMS Conference - Article about "The Practices of Knowledge Managers"

In the last conference of the Strategic Management Society in Koln (Germany), I presented a paper that summarized my PhD dissertation on the practices of knowledge managers in corporations. In this work, I adopt an activity system lens to understand the contradictions inside the activity system of the managers. Three conflicts of the knowledge management function are studied: the length of the mandate (long-term versus short-term); the instruments used to measure the impact of knowledge management initiatives on organizational performance and the governance chosen to manage the social networks and the databases.

You can download the slideshow of the presentation by clicking here


Soutenance de thèse de doctorat - 19 juin 2008

Hé oui, ca y'est! La thèse a été soutenue le 19 juin 2008 en présence de Gérard Koenig (Université Paris 12), d'Isabelle Huault (Université Paris Dauphine), de Bertrand Moingeon (HEC Paris), de Mathieu Detchessahar (Université de Nantes) et de ma directrice de thèse, Yvonne Giordano (Université de Nice).

Pour celles et ceux qui se posent souvent la question comment rédiger une soutenance de thèse de 300-400 pages en 10-15 slides voici ma réponse...

Télécharger ma soutenance de thèse ici

Pourquoi je n'aime pas Facebook...

Sous ce titre quelque peu provocateur, j'essaye de comprendre le phénomène social autour de Facebook.

Commencons par le commencement. Facebook était censé relier des copains de fac de manière sélective. L'idée de départ était de créer un réseau social. On peut définir un réseau social comme une « structure définie par des relations entre des individus » (Larrousse, 2007). Le terme « réseau » provient du latin « retis » signifiant un entrelacement de lignes, c'est-à-dire un tissu.

Le réseau qualifie alors la nature de la relation entre les individus en fonction du nombre de liens qui y sont développés. Cette problématique a largement été abordée par le sociologue Mark Granovetter dans son étude des liens interpersonnels : « la force des liens est une combinaison (probablement linéaire) de la quantité de temps, de l’intensité émotionnelle, de l’intimité (la confiance mutuelle) et des services réciproques qui caractérisent ce lien ».

Cette analyse part de l’idée que les individus entretiennent une multitude de liens mais qu’ils ne sont pas tous de la même nature et n’apportent pas les mêmes bénéfices. Ces liens peuvent être forts ou faibles. Les liens forts autour d’un individu forment un réseau dense (ex. les amis, la famille) et les liens faibles un réseau lâche (ex. une personne rencontrée une ou deux fois). Liens forts et liens faibles sont complémentaires. Alors que les liens faibles donnent accès aux connaissances disponibles en dehors du cercle social familier, les liens forts sont sources de confiance et procurent une forme de sécurité. L’intensité des liens au sein du réseau social modifie donc la capacité des individus à partager leur savoir.

Or ce que propose Facebook est de développer des liens forts...alors qu'il ne permet que de développer des liens faibles.

Je m'explique: Facebook est censé vous relier à des amis existants et vous permettre de vous en créer de nouveaux par cooptation (un tel connaît un tel qui connaît un tel, etc.). Or, ces liens forts sont des liens interactifs nécessaires pour l’échange des connaissances : un individu A ayant un lien fort avec un individu B aura nécessairement un lien avec C si le lien entre B et C est fort. Le réseau social de collaboration le plus naturel est celui de la famille, chaque membre se sentant solidaire par rapport à l’autre. Ceci est dû à l’existence d’un capital social affectif agissant comme une « colle sociologique » selon l'expression de Putnam.

Facebook permet, via Internet, de développer des colles sociologiques via les groupes ou les communautés. La transitivité des liens forts (A connaît B, B connaît C donc A et C se connaissent) justifie alors leur constitution. Elles forment alors un groupe d’individus reliés par des liens forts où la confiance et la réciprocité permettent de créer et de maintenir le processus de socialisation.

Dans la réalité, le nombre de liens s’établit autour d’une moyenne : certains individus vont beaucoup échanger, d’autres peu. Il y a coexistence de liens faibles et de liens forts. Le nombre de liens établis entre les personnes suit une distribution normale : la loi de Poisson (une courbe en cloche).

Il est donc illusoire, selon moi, de développer un sentiment d'amitié (lien d'affection qui unit deux personnes) via un outil de mise en relation des communautés. Tout simplement parce que Facebook fonctionne sur le principe du réseau par attachement préférentiel: les individus créent des liens avec ceux qu’ils affectionnent. Le nombre de liens décroît en fonction du nombre de personnes présentes dans leur réseau. Inversement, le nombre de liens par personne augmente au fur et à mesure que le nombre de personnes diminue. Ce mouvement peut se résumer par le célèbre dicton « qui se ressemble s’assemble » (en anglais « bird of a feather flocks together »). Les individus fonctionnent ici par homophilie (« homophily ») (McPherson et al, 2001) : « les réseaux personnels sont homogènes du fait de facteurs sociologiques, démographiques, comportementaux et personnels. L’homophilie limite les réseaux sociaux des individus et détermine les connaissances qu’ils vont partager, les attitudes qu’ils vont avoir et les interactions qu’ils vont vivre» (McPherson et al, 2001 : 415). C’est donc le sentiment de partager une même identité qui fonde le réseau social. Le phénomène de clique est ici porté à son paroxysme et le communautarisme et l'instinct grégaire peuvent alors se développer. Ces communautés sont alors instrumentalisées au profit de leurs créateurs et, aujourd'hui, au profit des publicitaires qui peuvent ainsi cibler leur message sur une communauté précise...qui se ressemble, s'assemble devient qui s'assemble consomme ensemble...voila donc la finalité de Facebook: vous connaître, vous, votre réseau social et amical pour mieux vous faire acheter des produits par marketing viral.

Mais en confondant réseau social et réseau amical et en instrumentalisant les communautés, Facebook joue à un jeu dangereux et contre-nature.

Voila donc pourquoi je n'aime pas Facebook.

Publish or Perish ?

Good news: one of my article has been published in the last issue of the scientific journal of the University Paris Dauphine.

The article can be accessed online by going on this link or by downloading a PdF version of the article by clicking here.

M@n@gement is a highly selective journal that has been ranked Category 2 by theCNRS (=three stars). To check the new ranking made by the CNRS ofjournals in economics and management, click on this link: Téléchargement Liste_2007_final.pdf (Updated in October 2007).

One comment I would like to make about writing academic articles: it is one important task of a teacher in a business school. Some colleagues say this is THE task. I tend to disagree with this. I am not a writer. I am a part-time researcher. When I am a researcher, my main activity is to explore companies, interview workers, observe practices, benchmark ideas, understand what I see, analyse what I collect, push people to talk, make sense out of numerous data.

The other part of my time is dedicated to teaching. I profess, I discuss with students, I read their reports, I control what I read, I exchange ideas with students. It is different, I think.

I tend to think that business schools have put the emphasize too much on research and less on pedagogy. I am not the only one to think that. Look at the study made by the AACSB on the impact of research made in business schools in the USA by clicking on this link.

A report released evaluates the nature and purposes of business school research and recommends steps to increase its value to students, practicing managers, and society. The report, issued by the Impact of Research task force of AACSB International, is released as a draft to solicit comments and feedback from business schools, their faculties and others.

Anyway, the debate about research and teaching is anever-ending one. I hope the latter won't be sacrified on the altar ofthe former...

10 research articles you should read

This year, I had to create a course in Knowledge Management in Audencia. My first idea was to select articles that students should read. Here is my (subjective) selection:


If only we knew what we know: identification and transfer of internal best practices. O'Dell, C., Grayson, J. (1998) California Management Review, 40(3), 154-174.Balancing act: how to capture knowledge without killing it. Brown, J. S., Duguid, P. (2000) Harvard Business Review (May-June).Why information technology inspired but cannot deliver knowledge management. McDermott, R. (1999) California Management Review, 41(4), 104-117.Knowledge management strategies: toward taxonomy. Earl, M. (2001) Journal of Mangement Information Systems, 18(1), 215-233.Successful knowledge management projects. Davenport, T., DeLong, D., Beers, M. (1998) Sloan Management Review, 39(2), 43-57.Organizing knowledge.Brown, J. S., Duguid, P. (1998) California Management Review, 40(3), 90-111.Communities of practice: the organizational frontier. Wenger, E., Snyder, W. (2000) Harvard Business Review, 78(1), 139-145.Knowledge management as a doughnut: shaping your knowledge strategy trough communities of practice. Wenger, E. (2004) Ivey Business Journal (January/February).Knowledge management: philosophy, processes and pitfalls. Soo, C., Devinney, T., Midgley, D., Deering, A. (2002) California Management Review, 44(4), 129-150.Introducing T-shaped managers: knowledge management’s next generation. Hansen, M. (2001) Harvard Business Review, 79(March), 106-116. About Recent Posts My Top 5 Articles in Knowledge Management from the Harvard Business Review Les pratiques des knowledge managers (Thèse de Doctorat, 2008) Atelier du 26 09, agenda franco-allemand sur les actifs immatériels, MINEFI 2010 Emerald/EFMD Outstanding Doctoral Research Award 1991-2010 Scientific Publications/Articles on Knowledge Management (source EBSCO/Business Source Premier) 2008 SMS Conference - Article about "The Practices of Knowledge Managers" Soutenance de thèse de doctorat - 19 juin 2008 Pourquoi je n'aime pas Facebook... Publish or Perish ? 10 research articles you should read Categories About my PhD (3) Conférences (1) En Francais (6) En français (1) In english (12) Management Theory (2) Seminar (4) Story (1) See More Books I read

Gilbert Probst: Managing Knowledge: Building Blocks for Success
This book is mainly normative and oriented towards manager (not researchers). The content is a little bit outdated now. Nevertheless some chapters are interesting (especially on measuring knowledge). So far, it is not rocket science. (**)

Alexander Styhre: Understanding Knowledge Management: Critical and Postmodern Perspectives
This book is an attempt to formulate a critique of knowledge management theory and knowledge management practice on the basis of post-modern and critical theory. I loved it. Very useful to have a critical eye on the litterature. (*****)

Silvia Gherardi: Knowing in Organizations: A Practice-Based Approach
What are the conceptual relationships between knowledge, knowing and practice? This book support a practice-based view of the organizations and a social perspective of knowledge sharing. A great collection of high quality articles ! (****)

D. Christian: A la recherche du sens dans l'entreprise... Compter, raconter ? La Stratégie du récit
L'auteur constate ici le déboussolement des managers dans les entreprises. Pour retrouver le bon sens, il nous livre les avantages et les inconvénients du récit...pour le leader, il ne s'agit plus de compter mais de conter! (***)

Gabriel Szulanski: Sticky Knowledge : Barriers to Knowing in the Firm (The Strategy Series)
A masterpiece! This book is "sticky" in your head. This research conducted with APQC explains why firms encountered difficulties for transferring practices. Brilliant dissertation... (*****)

Bertrand Moingeon: Peut-on former les dirigeants ?
Un livre très intéressant qui regroupe des articles de qualité traitant de la prise de décision, le knowledge management et l'apport de la philosophie sur les sciences de gestion. J'ai particulièrement apprécié l'article très original d'Andreu Sole (qui nous fait vivre avec humour et passion sa journée de prof à HEC Management) et celui sur le "Learning Mix" de Bertrand Moingeon (une très bonne synthèse). (****)

Arie de Geus: The Living Company
A fresh book on orgnizational learning. Check the story about the titmouse and the red robbin on my blog. (****)

Bryan Bergeron: Essentials of Knowledge Management
Nice and accessible book on Knowledge Management. (***)

Ikujiro Nonaka: The Knowledge-Creating Company: How Japanese Companies Create the Dynamics of Innovation
A fundamental book for academic research in knowledge management. Nonaka creates a theory on knowledge creation in organizations to explain how Japanese companies are successfull. A must ! (*****)

C. J. /Roche Pomian: Connaissance capitale. management des connaissances et organisation du travail
A great book which underlines the evolution of work and the importance and value of the knowledge capital in organizations. (****)

Blogs I read David Bollier Frédéric Vermeulin John Seely Brown Jack Vinson Jean-Pierre CORNIOU Dominique Turcq Geoffroi Garon Aurelie Dudezert Bill Ives David Gurteen Steve Denning Martin Dugage Links State Of The Internet 2011 Naked Capitalism Text Analysis Info - QDA software A collection of short video interviews "What is KM?" Les Echos: L'Art du Management de l'Information et des Connaissances OCDE: Economie et Gestion des Connaissances Academic Blogging: Some BloggerCon III Afterthoughts Journal of Knowledge Management Practice AIMS (Association de Management Stratégique) Subscribe to this blog's feed Visits of my blog Categories About my PhD Conférences En Francais En français In english Management Theory Seminar Story

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